BILLINGS, Mont. - Solex LLC, a Baton Rouge, La.-based company will receive $2.6M to relinquish the last remaining oil and gas lease on U.S. forest land near Montana's Glacier National Park that is sacred to Native Americans, government officials and attorneys involved in the deal said Sept. 1.
The deal would resolve a decades-long dispute over the 10-square-mile O&G lease in the mountainous Badger-Two Medicine area of NW Montana.
Solenex founder Sidney Longwell, who died last year, bought the 10-square-mile lease in 1982 but never drilled on the site because of federal bureaucracy.
The site is on the site of the creation story for the Blackfoot tribes of southern Canada and Montana's Blackfeet Nation. Tribal members bitterly opposed drilling.
In exchange for giving up the lease, Solenex will get $2.6M, according to David McDonald with the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represented the company.
The government will pay $2M. The Wyss Foundation, a charitable group founded by Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, will provide the remaining $625,000.
The Solenex lease was cancelled in 2016 by U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell - at the request of the Blackfoot tribes and conservation groups.
But U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ordered the lease reinstated last year. (The AP 09/02/23) Company gets $2.6M to give up oil lease on sacred land | News | nola.com
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